'Let it go...'

We're meant to be mature enough to take being second bested, but it doesn't mean we don't feel it. My son, now four, since birth has made it perfectly clear I was second best to mother, which I can understand. I didn't carry him, don't have tits, and I'm hairier and smellier. When he makes me angry I make him deal with his mistake and am not softened up by him until he does. He's got the mother-con of most Japanese and hybrid boys I've known, from nature or nurture. I'll have a Japanese, or at least Asian, daughter in-law (or son in-law).

The girl, a year and a half old, has played me far better from birth. As soon as her eyes could focus she looked into mine and smiled, and owned me. A more recent example, I was away hiking two nights and the kids and wife were staying at mother in-law's. I went to meet them, walking with the wife from the station to MIL's house. We met MIL and the kids on MIL's street. The girl looked at me as if she suddenly remembered something, smiled, ran past my wife and into my arms. Then when we got inside I tried to put her down to take off my shoes but she screamed and clutched at me, so I had to improvise another way to get out of them.

Ain't love grand? Sure, until she remembered her mother has a chest. After she was done with them I went to pick her up again and she screamed at me and struggled in my arms until I put her back with her mother.

4 comments:

Talking about the Mother-con...as I understand your kids will grow up in Canada, have you made a game-plan yet to get the Japaneseness out of your son? I do not know you or your kid but generally speaking, any hint of Asianness is still a huge burden on any male seeking relationships to Western woman (and anyone who has lived in Japan and has gotten to know Japanese men knows that Western women should get a medal for having such a correctly tuned radar).I guess it will take a lot of shielding from Japanese culture to give him a sound amount of self-esteem and therefore a chance with Western women.

First of all, 'with all due respect', that's my wife and son you're talking about. Second, he has an Anglo-Canadian father as his role-model, not an absent Japanese father, make of that what you will. I do not loathe this place, or love European cultures, quite as much as you though am much of the way there: I do not have a "game-plan yet to get the Japaneseness out of [my] son." I do not know where you live, but the hybrid-Asian male thing is no longer such an issue in Toronto. The outskirts maybe, but who'd effing live there? I have a plan for him to have the physical and mental strength to face shit down, so the rest should fall into place.

As for 'gaydar' in Japan, it took me awhile also, but in the end it's simple and similar to N. America: the homosexual men have a better sense of humour. As for continental Europeans, I can never be sure, or sure it matters.

It'll be interesting to see how those relationships change as your kids get older. I know with my son, a lot of the physical closeness, hugging etc just naturally stopped when he hit puberty. I really don't think it's a mother con at that age, it's just a normal stage of development.